June 3, 2022
The Third Place Is a Mural Now: Cities Betting on Public Art to Fix What Community Lost
A three-block mural, painted by forty residents over six weekends, turned a stretch of empty storefronts into the most photographed corner of a mid-sized Rust Belt city. It also did something no tax incentive on the books had managed: it gave people a reason to stop walking and talk to whoever was standing next to them. That is not a feel-good anecdote cities are telling themselves to justify an arts budget. It is a strategy, increasingly deliberate, showing up in planning documents and municipal budgets across a wide range of cities. The friction driving it is specific: traditional gathering spaces,
